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The Ten Best Things About the Spurs' Elimination by the Mavericks

By Daniel Strickland on May 24, 2006.

As my thoughts have ranged from the suicidal to the homicidal to the tyrannicidal to the genocidal* to the ursicidal over the last 36 hours, in my great desperation to find an alternative to violence, I have turned, finally, to optimism. Yes, looking on the bright side is for pussies. Yes, I swore to myself that I would never resort to optimism again. Yet as a temporary measure in these, the worst of times, it seems somehow justifiable.

Thus, without further ado, I present “Bramlet’s Ten Best Things About the Spurs’ Elimination by the (Motherfucking) Mavericks”:

10. The Spurs didn’t go down without one hell of a fight. We can, like the whimpering wusses we temporarily are, console ourselves with the knowledge that the Spurs came within a Duncan putback of finishing off one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the NBA playoffs, not only in Game 7, but in the series. The Spurs showed their champions’ hearts—it’s just unfortunate that they apparently left their champions’ brains in their lockers.

9. Mark Cuban won’t kill himself. Poor Mark appeared to come a bit unhinged over the course of the series, and the urge to end it all appeared etched on his face at a number of points during the last few games. What a tragedy it would be if the world were deprived of this wonderful, wonderful man.

What would life be like as an NBA fan without the Man We Love to Hate?

8. Jerry Stackhouse can still become the first Ferengi to win an NBA championship. (Thanks to Friend of the Dynasty RAY-nay for spotting the similarity.)

Jerry Stackhouse (above) has spent his entire career obeying the 236th Rule of Acquisition: “Sacrificing oneself to help win a championship is bad for the bottom line.”

By the way, did you know that a Google image search for “Ferengi” yields 4700 results? There’s something frightening about the fact that even the trailer trash of the Star Trek universe have that many devotees.

Follow the link above if you want to make one of these babies the right way. The “Warp Core Breach” recipe propagated by most cocktail sites is a fabrication of the liberal, communist, America- and United Federation of Planets-hating media.

7. David Stern’s wet dream of a Spurs-less Western Conference Championship has been realized. For once, we won’t have to read about how HGTV’s “How to Make Paint Dry More Efficiently” consistently gets higher ratings than any Finals game involving the Spurs.

It’s called defense, and it’s fucking beautiful. But the masses will never get it.

6. SpursDynasty’s soon-to-be Senior Singapore Correspondent RAY-nay is free to commence his capricidal quest to corral African poverty by eating all of its goats. This is the kind of insight that only a Peace Corps veteran can give you: out-of-control goats are eating Africa’s crops faster than its people can grow them! Are you paying attention, Bono and Bill Gates?

The sub-Saharan short-haired scapegoat, not a combination of corrupt warlords, intertribal warfare, crushing debt, malaria, AIDS, and the aftermath of European imperialism, is the real cause of famine in Africa.

5. The Wife of The Bramlet has only Bramlet’s Pearl Jam obsession left to vie with for his time and attention. Unfortunately for her, they just released a new record and started a series of tours that will last for at least another six months—which, of course, means dozens of “official bootlegs” (now offered in FLAC for the lossless Nazis!) to collect so I can savor every drunken Vedder witticism, blown lyric, searing McCready guitar solo, stunning melodic nuance, and mind-altering Rearviewmirror jam. But I’ll still find plenty of time to spend with my wonderful woman.

Robertas Javtokas is a MAN. The Bramlet guarantees that he won’t get benched for an entire series.

3. The Spurs will get more rest and will be motivated to rip the league a new one next year. Hell, they need the extra rest, especially with Timmy’s plantar fasciitis (which has been held in check, not cured) and with a number of Spurs scheduled to participate in the World Championships this summer. My prediction: Manu redeems himself by leading Argentina to a world championship and keeping his streak of winning some kind of championship in every year since 2001 alive. (I include a 2002 World Championship in that streak, because as everyone knows, if Manu had been healthy—or if Argentina hadn’t been flagrantly jobbed by the refs—they wouldn’t have come in 2nd place.)

2. We’ll be able to enjoy an exciting and amusing offseason of outraged fans calling for Pop’s head. It’s not that I believe Spurs fans don’t have the right to express their opinion, but the hubris of armchair point guards who think they’re more capable of leading the Spurs to a championship than Gregg Popovich never ceases to blow Bramlet’s mind. There’s a tone of angry self-righteousness to some of the criticism that is stunning, especially coming from the luckiest fans in the NBA. More on these topics later.

This man has to be the most questioned winner of three championships in the history of sports.**

…And finally, the best thing about the Spurs’ elimination by the Mavericks is:

1. Spurs fans can finally relax. Let’s face it: it’s a damn long season, and the playoffs present a pretty heavy psychological burden for us true Spurs fans to carry. The intense demands of ensuring that the Spurs have enough Mojo to overcome the disadvantages of being a small-market team, being despised by ESPN, and having to contend with Satan’s minions threaten to overwhelm us at times.

I’m looking forward to life returning to normal—or at least as close to normal as life ever gets for someone who performs voodoo rituals against opposing players, eats three-year-old Championship Wheaties, and engages in vicious self-flagellation after painful playoff losses.

Opus Dei has nothing on The Bramlet, who is an eager practitioner of multiple forms of self-abuse.

Spurs fans, it’s been a great season despite the soul-crushingly, baby-seal-killingly disappointing way it ended, and I have faith that next season will be another return to glory for the Spurs, highlighted by a ruthless neck-stomping of our new archrivals. But really, the NBA season never truly ends for us at SpursDynasty, because the Spurs are not a team, they are a way of life. We’ll have more to say in the coming days and weeks.

The Age of Duncan ain’t over yet, and neither is the Spurs Dynasty, baby!

** That is, with the exception of football (soccer) coaches, who don’t count, because everyone knows that “football fan” is simply a euphemism for “crazy motherfucker who ought to be in a straitjacket, throwing himself against his padded walls.”